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Recovering from your Campaign Hangover

Well… that’s just great. After all the lawn sign pounding, Facebook liking, and district walking America “chose” another four years of Barack Obama. Hey, that’s good for me. I can keep telling the same jokes. Keep using the same memes. Keep all the same facts and figures loaded and at the ready. As for the question of foreign and domestic policy, I wash my hands of the whole thing. You’re all going to have to murder and steal from each other without me.

Now, there’s 60.45 million of you out there who are simply elated right now. That’s the 29% of eligible voters that actually won this horse race. But the other 71% who voted for Romney, voted third party, or didn’t bother to vote at all are now suffering from a serious campaign hangover.

I know what you’re going through. I poured all I had into the 2008 Ron Paul campaign, and to a lesser extent I participated in his 2012 campaign, but only socially. It’s devastating for some people, and the more you invested the greater the crash. You wake up the next morning, after all that blood and treasure, and have nothing to show for the hundreds of thousands of hours people volunteered. The duopoly spent billions of dollars. The third parties spent millions of dollars. And nothing significant changed.

So, I have to ask… was it worth it? The hangover is an apt metaphor on a number of levels. Campaign volunteers across the political spectrum have been drunk of hope and promises for months. And like any bender they experienced some minor increased self-confidence and sociability followed by serious cognitive impairment, memory loss and blurred vision.

I know, I know. Voting is quick and easy, and best of all it’s free. But the real question is… does it accomplish anything?

Elections are a puppet show. It should be clear beyond doubt after all the primary shenanigans that the American people are not given an honest choice until the puppeteers have narrowed the field. Obama supporters elected a candidate that signed the Patriot Act, signed NDAA, perpetuated the war on drugs, escalated the war on terror, kept Guantanamo open and has been droning the crap out of innocent civilians in third world countries incessantly, including a drone strike on Yemen just hours after his victory. And Obama supporters did this imagining that they were voting for the “peace candidate.“

But if you don’t like the hangover you have to ask yourself, do you want a remedy or a cure? If you just want a temporary alleviation of symptoms I’m sure there are campaign groups starting up already, and like a true drug fiend you can get right back on the bandwagon waving signs and calling strangers at dinner time. You can even get started on the midterm elections if you need a fix. But if you want a cure for hangovers there’s only one solution. Stop drinking.

Positive change doesn’t happen at the ballot box and it doesn’t happen in Washington. It happens right where you’re sitting now. It starts with you, and your neighbors, and your family and friends. Positive change happens when you take your time, and you take your resources, and take your life in your own hands.

In grade school Davi refused to recite the pledge of allegiance because he didn't understand what it meant. He was ordered to do as he was told. In college he spent hours scouring through the congressional record trying to understand this strange machine. That's where he discovered Dr. Ron Paul. In 2007 he joined the End The Fed movement and found a political home with the libertarians. The Declaration of Independence claims that the government derives its power “from the consent of the governed." He does not consent.